In tracking my wife diarrrhea with Tarceva we found that 70% of the time it hits in the morning. This jumps to to about 90% plus for the unexplained diarrhea episodes that cannot be traced to a trigger food or an event such as overeating. She take the Tarceva between 10 and 10:30pm, she eats very lightly at breakfast and the rest of the morning. We tend to be morning people while we can work around this at home it really wrecks our traveling. Is it possible that changing the timing of the Tarceva could move the prime diarrhea worry time to the evening?

Yes jkcath it’s possible and certainly worth trying. I remember when my husband took tarceva he had a tough time with diarrhea. Talk to your oncology team about it but unless she skips around a lot with the timing I don’t think it would be a problem to test out a different pattern.

When she take Tarceva at 10 – 10:30PM we find that she can only eat a very small breakfast around 7:30 AM and can only eat one or two tiny snacks before noon.

If we switch the Tarceva to 6 AM would she have to eat very tiny portions for the next 12-14 hours or would this change if she ate about an hour after taking the Tarceva?

She tried to eat a graham cracker around 4 AM, but that seemed to throw the diarrhea off, it could occur any time between 9 AM and 11 AM when we were doing this, we stopped this since it seemed to make things worst.

Unfortunately I don’t think it’s possible to predict with any certainty what may happen and when it may happen,other than by trial and error. I wish that there was a better answer, but in reviewing your previous threads, it seems as though you’ve tried all the typical interventions. Aside from switching to another type of treatment such as chemotherapy, I’m not sure what else can be recommended.

Hello
After some trial and error my wife hit a sweet spot in taking tarceva. She been taking it at 10:00 am still having some cramps but no diarrhea episodes for 60+ days. However we just found out that tarceva is no longer working and she will be switched to targrisso this week. Now I am no sure if she hit a sweet spot or it was more the tarceva had stopped working on the cancer. Hope she can handle the side effects of targrisso better.

Since there isn’t a direct connection between the level of side effects and the efficacy of an EGFR TKI, I think your wife simply found a sweet spot, or as some patients do, her body adapted to the treatment. Unfortunately, most patients cancers develop resistance to Tarceva.